Start

One hundred and twenty-five years ago a company was established to produce and market hand-made playing cards. You know its name. Almost everyone knows its name.

That this humble Japanese enterprise would endure for multiple generations, and numerous changes of business, mean it was surely dealt a lucky hand. For it to then find meteoric ascension as a manufacturer of electronic games during the early eighties suggests they had the luck of the Gods.

But to survive this success would prove the greatest challenge of all. The company founded on games of chance would have to leave luck behind. They would have to discover how to stand as both a pioneer in a new artistic medium, and an iron-fisted rein-holder for a fledgling industry. They would rise. They would fall. They would produce masterpieces of interactive entertainment, and masterpieces of manipulative commerce.

And how better to tell this story than with the games they made.

This twice-weekly blog will attempt to track the development of Nintendo across the eighties, nineties and noughties by examining every game the company published in chronological order. Each entry will aim to be more than a review, but an exploration of each game's context and how Nintendo developed through their creation. (Plus a little bit of review as well, because there's no point in neutering the joy these games bring by divorcing my blog from the subjective experience of playing them. And frankly, it's hard to shut myself up sometimes.)

If anyone finds themselves reading this, by purest chance, then I welcome you to join me in this strange endeavour. Play along from the very beginning, or take a warp pipe right to the latest entry.